Quick Bite: Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in San Jose

Back before the McCafe Frappe was even a gleam in Ronald McDonald's eye, and before frap met chino at Starbucks, there was the Ice Blended.

The shotgun marriage of coffee, milk, crushed ice and flavoring made its debut at a Los Angeles coffee bar called The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf back in 1989 and for years remained largely unknown outside of Southern California.

However, in the late '90s, the family that founded Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf sold out and the new owners undertook a rapid expansion, including opening a store in San Francisco a decade ago. Now The Bean has come to Silicon Valley with the first South Bay outpost opening in the @First shopping center where North First Street meets Highway 237.

The original Ice Blended ($4.25 for a small) is a blend of coffee, cocoa powder, milk and crushed ice. The texture is somewhere between a milkshake and an iced coffee, very close to a partially melted Hawaiian shave ice but with chocolate. And caffeine. It tastes more of chocolate than a regular iced mocha but still has coffee's sharpness to remind you that you're not drinking a kid's milkshake.

The Ice Blended comes in multiple flavors including vanilla, white chocolate, dark chocolate, hazelnut (with a very strong hazelnut flavor that completely overpowers the coffee), black forest (with chocolate-covered espresso beans and maraschino cherries) and my favorite, caramel, which is a vanilla Ice Blended with a swirl of caramel and topped with whipped cream drizzled with caramel. You should always get whipped cream with your Ice Blended.

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If you're worried about calories, you should get a black coffee ($1.75 for a small) or tepid tap water (it's free).

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf offers plenty of noncoffee drinks including a Chai Ice Blended and a Malibu Dream Ice Blended ($3.65 for a small). The Malibu Dream is a combination of strawberry and banana juices mixed into a vanilla Ice Blended that does not contain coffee. It tastes very tropical, almost piña colada-ish -- except without the rum, though rum would be a fine addition to that or really any Ice Blended.

Like all coffee bars, The Bean sells pastries as well as a limited number of sandwiches, salads and snacks.

The coffeecake ($3) is the one big miss at Coffee Bean. It was dry. I gave myself an ice cream headache because I was drinking my Ice Blended so fast to try to wash it down. On top of that, the crumb topping was very thin and appeared to be nothing more than white sugar.

The blueberry muffin was much better. Moist and sweet, it had plump, almost-dime-sized blueberries scattered throughout.

If you are a fan of green tea, you need to try the green tea panna cotta ($3.95). The custard was smooth and creamy, and it had the most intense green tea flavor I've ever come across in a nonbeverage. It wasn't anything like the green tea ice creams I've had in my life, which tasted like vanilla ice cream with a dash of green tea flavor. This was solid green tea with just a little sweetness to remind you it's a dessert.

Coffee Bean does a lot of the little things right in its store. There is free Wi-Fi with the access code prominently posted, no having to sheepishly ask someone behind the counter for it. There are plenty of power outlets to plug in your tablet or laptop computer, and they even have charging cables for iPhones and other personal electronic devices.

Another thing I really liked was they have simple syrup in addition to sugar and artificial sweeteners. So if you get an iced tea or other cold beverage, you can just add the syrup and drink away. None of this stirring for five minutes, tasting and realizing the sugar hasn't dissolved, stirring some more, tasting again, and finally giving up and just drinking it with the undissolved sugar.

This is the first Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the South Bay, and I'm hoping it's just the start of a major expansion. In fact, there's a vacant building a couple of blocks from my house ...

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

4190 N. First St., San Jose408-428-9280

Hours: 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday- Friday, 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.Types of food: Coffee, tea and limited foodAverage meal price: Drinks are less than $5Good choices: The Ice BlendedNot Recommended: The coffeecakeAttitude: Very helpful, always ready to explain the menu and the different types of coffee and teaAmenities: Free Wi-Fi and smartphone charging stationsVegetarian options: yesDrinks: No alcohol, although adding rum to an Ice Blended would be a stroke of geniusEat in car: AbsolutelyNext-day edibility: NoWho goes there: Brocade employees, Southern California expatsCredit cards: All major onesParking: Plenty

Restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously. The Mercury News pays for all meals.